Starting on December 31, 2017, the North Carolina Industrial Commission will have a permanent Employee Classification Section charged with investigating and punishing employers who misclassify employees as independent contractors. The Employee Classification Section was initially created through an executive order signed by former Governor Pat McCrory on December 18, 2015, Executive Order No. 83. The…

An independent contractor is an individual who generally falls outside of the structure of the Workers’ Compensation Act. Whether a person employed to perform specified work for another is to be regarded as an independent contractor or as an employee within meaning of Workers’ Compensation Act is determined by application of ordinary common-law tests. Youngblood…

In Ball v. Bayada Home Health Care, Plaintiff worked for Bayada as a certified nurse’s assistant for nine months before she was transferred to a new location and began working with a single client. As a result of this change, Plaintiff’s hourly wage and number of hours increased. Plaintiff sustained a work-related injury on February…

The North Carolina Industrial Commission recently announced a stricter policy, which includes increased sanctions for failing to timely file a Form 60, 61 or 63. Pursuant to an October 2, 2017 Memorandum issued by the North Carolina Industrial Commission, effective December 1, 2017, there will be changes to the sanction amounts and processes for sanctions pursuant to…

Industrial Commission Executive Secretary Meredith Henderson announced this week that beginning Monday, September 18, 2017, the Commission will no longer accept motion filings or motion responses from adjusters or insurance carriers. Documents the Commission will no longer accept from adjusters include Form 24s, and responses to Form 23s, Form 28Us and Form 18Ms, as well…

Following North Carolina’s July 2017 legislative change to the North Carolina Workers’ Compensation Act, one might have put aside concerns over Wilkes v City of Greenville; resting assured that the slippery slope within NC Workers’ Compensation claims as to compensability of late-reported and or ‘new’ injury conditions remained merely that, a slippery slope, rather than…

If you have worked on the defense side of workers’ compensation claims for any period of time, the above headline likely sounds like a work of fiction. While we have all heard of the elaborate measures the NCIC Fraud Investigation Unit takes to prosecute employers who fail to maintain proper insurance coverage, the idea of…

The North Carolina Court of Appeals left the Industrial Commission scrambling when it issued its September 20, 2016, Opinion in Bentley v. Jonathan Piner Construction, holding the plain language of N.C. Gen. Stat. § 97-84 was violated when the Commission based its Opinion and Award on an Opinion issued by a deputy commissioner who was…

As opioid use continues to plague the community, as part of the workers’ compensation system and otherwise, North Carolina is one of many states working to take steps to reduce availability and use of prescription pain killers. Per the North Carolina Opioid Action Plan (2017-2021), prepared by the Prescription Drug Abuse Advisory Committee (PDAAC), unintentional…